Promising Career Of Actor Cut Short

In a small room at Illinois Masonic Hospital, Keith Perry stood alone with his friend J. Daniel O`Connor for the last time.

O`Connor`s body was covered with a white sheet. A drop of blood fell from his left eye, which was not quite closed. Perry leaned over and kissed his forehead.

``Part of me heard Danny saying, `This isn`t real. I`m just playing a part,` `` Perry recalled. ``Part of me hoped he would get up, but I knew he wouldn`t.``

On Saturday, O`Connor, 22, an aspiring actor and a part-time bartender, was stabbed nine times by an unknown assailant as he was trying to hail a cab on the North Side.

Detectives said O`Connor was not robbed and the motive for the killing remains a mystery. On Monday, no suspects were in police custody.

Friends and relatives of O`Connor described him as a strong-willed person who, as a high school student, decided he wanted to be an actor.

He transferred from Maine East High School, where his passion was sports, to the Chicago Academy for the Arts, a high school for the performing and visual arts.

In 1983, in recognition of his talent and dedication to the craft of acting, O`Connor was awarded the first John Belushi Second City scholarship.

``We didn`t want the smartest kid in the school, the person always cast in the lead roles,`` said Joyce Sloane, producer of Second City and chairwoman of the board of trustees for the academy. ``We wanted the student for whom this scholarship would change his life around.``

Fellow students at the academy were initially mystified as to why an ex-wrestler and football player had suddenly decided to pursue theater.

``It was kind of weird that a jock was at a performing high school,``

said Roxanne Atkins, 21, an academy alumnus. ``But he just grew. Everything in acting studios, he would be the first to try. He tried so hard. . . . With his motivation and drive he would have made it.``

Atkins, who echoed the thoughts of others who knew O`Connor, said she could think of no one who would want to harm him.

``He was the type of person who didn`t have enemies,`` she said.

According to friends, O`Connor, who had worked as a bartender at PS Chicago for more than a month, was planning a summer showcase to benefit the academy.

``He wanted to give something back to the school,`` Perry said.

O`Connor was a member of a local Shakespearean repertory company and was saving money to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, friends and relatives said. Most recently, he had been studying improvisational acting at Second City.

His sister, Katie O`Connor, said he met up with a woman for what would be their first and only date after he completed work at PS Chicago about 8 p.m. Friday. They ate dinner at a downtown restaurant, returned to PS Chicago for a drink and then took a cab to the woman`s North Side apartment, the sister said.

A half-hour later, O`Connor left the woman`s apartment and walked toward the intersection of Diversey and Racine Avenues to hail a cab, according to Katie O`Connor.

In their search for clues, police are studying a journal O`Connor kept, she said.

According to Perry, the benefit O`Connor planned will take place Aug. 18 to 19 at the Blackstone Theater. All proceeds will go to the academy in O`Connor`s name, Perry said.

Mass for O`Connor will be said at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Old St. Patrick`s Catholic Church, 718 W. Adams St.